Stan Myers is the president and CEO of Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI). Prior to his appointment as SEMI president in 1996, Myers worked for 17 years at Siltec, a manufacturer of silicon wafers. He served as president and CEO of Siltec since 1985, and in 1986 he completed negotiations for the acquisition of Siltec by Mitsubishi Materials Corporation. Prior to Siltec, Myers worked for Monsanto Corporation for 18 years. Myers continues to serve on the SEMI board of directors, a post to which he was elected in 1988. He sits on the boards of Ecosol, SKW Corporation, and MATEC (Maricopa Advanced Technology Education Center). Myers also is a member of the Engineering Advisory Council of San Jose State University. Myers earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Kansas.

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CA: We're doing another of the SEMI oral history archives and the guest today is Stan Myers, president and CEO of SEMI. Thanks, Stan, for joining us.

SM: You're welcome, Craig.

CA: Can we start right at the beginning and have you tell the story of how you became involved with your first job, whether that was in the electronics industry or not.

SM: Actually I graduated in Chemical Engineering from the University of Kansas in 1960 and went to work for Monsanto Company. And it was not in the electronics business. It was what we called sand and gravel, or sodium tripolyphosphate. It's actually the basic raw material used in detergents. And I did that for about a year and then I was transferred to the silicon plant in St. Peters, Missouri.

CA: What about during your studies. What did you study and did you have an idea of being an engineer in the chemical industry?

SM: My study was in chemical engineering with a minor and some graduate work in nuclear reactor engineering. And I went to work for Monsanto because I knew it was a pretty famous chemical company at the time. But they were getting into this brand new field called semiconductors. And within a year I migrated to the silicon plant, which was the basic raw materials for semiconductors.

CA: Where was this?

SM: I first started in St. Louis, Missouri with Monsanto. And just west of there, about 50 miles, there was a little town called St. Peters, Missouri. That's still the home of MEMC.

CA: At the time were you single, living alone or with family?

SM: No, no. I was married. My wife put me through the last part of my college at the University of Kansas. So we both moved to St. Louis from there.

CA: Now, the first period when you were in the detergent business, did you want to move over to semiconductors or you were happy at the time?

SM: Well, I was happy at the time, but I did in fact have a high, keen interest in this new Siemens process that Monsanto had licensed to grow single crystal…actually it was float zone crystal at the time. That was before we got into Czochralski grown crystals.

CA: How did you move over to the semiconductor side? Can you tell the story?

SM: It was by accident, actually. Monsanto had hired about 98 engineers in that year that I came in. And a downturn happened right after that and there was only five of us left that they hadn't laid off. And of the five, three of us were given an option to go into the silicon business or to be transferred to another location in Monsanto. I opted for the silicon business.

CA: Was it a general economic downturn, not a silicon one?

SM: Yes, a general economic downturn and they had over-hired engineers at the time. So about 93 of them found other jobs. Five of us ended up staying with Monsanto.

CA: So your first downturn was not in the semiconductor business. But you've had many since then.

SM: Yes. Actually it was not a silicon cycle that caught us there. It was probably some other kind of cycle.

CA: What were you doing when you first moved over to the semiconductor side of the business?

SM: I went out as an assistant shift supervisor doing rotating shifts in the plant. It was running seven days a week, 24 hours a day. And I quickly became the shift supervisor and then moved up into other management positions over my 17 years with Monsanto.

CA: What was the end product coming off that line?

SM: Well, initially it was vacuum zone refined material. Pretty much intrinsic kind of material used by Westinghouse and General Electric at the time.

CA: And that was for semiconductor manufacturing?

SM: Yes, it was for power products. Thyristors, that kind of thing.

CA: And in terms of the diameters of the wafers?

SM: We started out with diameters of about a half inch. That was the maximum we could do. We got the float zone crystals up to about one inch diameter within three years. But about that time crystal growing was taking shape. You could grow much larger diameters with crystal growers.

CA: You mentioned you used the Siemens process. Can you talk about how Monsanto acquired that technology?

SM: Well, it was not just Monsanto. Actually, Dupont, Merck, Dow-Corning, Texas Instruments, and Monsanto all licensed the Siemens process. So we were just one of a number of companies that took a license.

CA: Was Siemens the world leader in that area at the time?

SM: Oh, definitely they were the leader in the technology of growing the crystal and making the power products.

CA: At that stage was there anything happening in Japan in terms of the crystal growing or silicon wafers?

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